a spreading of wings, a bating of breath, a sense of something coming

Pieces of

Toward the end of dinner, I was bored with my date and didn’t have enough money for our check. She seemed expectant that I pick up the tab regardless as to how it was going. It was time to play the old “I forgot my wallet” line. Hands out in front of me, completely open, totally innocent. It was a good act and it seemed to be working. So I never said anything and let them think they knew me.
—

I knew somebody had rank the last of my orange juice and put it back in the fridge. THat’s why *I* ate the last of the ice cream. I knew if I didn’t take such immediate action, you’d have done the same. I would have done it better than you. You were always just too unfocused, too self absorbed to get it right. After I said that, our band broke up, and the cover band of us kept playing.
—

A surly teenager boarded the bus with a lollipop. There were no seats and it was summer. They stood in the back next to the door so they could leave whenever they wanted. “I’m feeling pretty pretty sketched out, wanna ditch?” Maze said, sidling out.
“No way, we’re in this Stack,” said the queen of Hearts to her son Jack who was too busy messing with the tarts to listen.
—

Drunk and in love, I made a regretable error. I chose the Celine Dion song one too many times on the bar jukebox. This big muscle-armed kid — I mean like eleven or twelve — came up and punched me in the face for it. And, sure, it hurt a little, but mostly I was just struck by how stupid that was. In hindsight, I knew it was stupid, but I was yound and didn’t care. No one would ever speak of it again.
—

My silence burns your eyes.
“Did it hurt?” she asked “When you fell fom heaven?”
“IT was more like a float than a fall.”
In this way, they were able to watch everything for a while before it landed. When it did, the wind blew so hard it felt like the earth shook, but it was only the grass sweeping around.
—

“Sip your coffee and shut the hell up about it,” the server barked.
The customer’s eyes widened and their mouth hung slackly open.
It was one of those restaurants where you were allowed to break dishes if you paid a cover charge. A popular spot for Greek weddings and deep pocketed assholes. It was also the sight where Aphrodite smote Goliath. I mean, that’s what the tour guide claimed, but who believes those assholes anyhow?
—

In the center of the field, the kids sat in a circle, slowly burning the last fragments of their pasts.
“If anyone tells,” said Max, “we throw you in and burn you, too.”
THere was no doubt they were serious. So we hired a clown to help lighten the mood. When the hired entertainment arrived, no-one believed how ugly the cheap wig was. When it fell off, everyone just aobut died laughing.
—

The path we took lead to the water. In the water, a crockodile sat. Nothin was visible but his eyes. That’s when she took their game of peek-a-boo one step further and disappeared. The police searched for days with no luck and no leads. Then, the call from a so-called anonymous informant came in, but everyone knew it — it was the whistle-blower, Sipper.
—

A dog was digging a hole in my yard. I’d had enough of that, so I got papi’s gun and blew its head off. It wasn’t a clean “off”; it was more of a scattered mess of blood + bone. They swept it up and hopped in a car, a dustbin of gore, and raced to the hospital. Maggie, near blind from the cut in her scalp, felt to check if she still had two eyes. She did not — one had fallen off, the other had sunk into her brain.
—

Sally from the shoe shop was not feeling her best. She went to the baker for some smile cookies to make her feel better. The door jingled as it opened. And then, the knot that help the bells on came loose, and they jingled to the floor.
“Oh no,” Jimmy cried, “I didn’t get to jingle all the way!”
Christy scowled, “Paper money is better any time.”
“That’s why I throw pennies at homeless people.”
—

Flash fiction written half-blind, sentence-by-sentence, in the round by 5 writers.